Questions
Having read Caroline Morehead's Village of Secrets, I am left (as I was during and after playing Otto Frank in The Diary of Anne Frank) wondering how I would behave if faced with the choices these people had to make.
Of course, one always sees oneself doing the heroic thing, compassionate, caring and brave. But how would I have responded had I grown up in 1920s-'30s Germany, constantly being told that my people were so taken advantage of by the Versailles Treaty, with such horrendous economic dislocation, loss of hope, chaos, and being told at every turn that it was the fault of a particular group that conspired on a global scale--conspiracy theories being so popular.
Even today, conspiracy theories abound. Witness the Occupy Movement and the voluminous theories of "the one percent", the Wall Street Vultures. It actually seems to go back to Biblical times when the "money-lenders" were mercilessly pilloried.
I try, as best I can, to be aware of my own biases. But I know that as a child and young teenager I cannot count myself among the innocent. Then, coming-of-age in the 60s and early 70s, those prejudices turned against the "rich", those evil ones in power who hog all the blessings for themselves. That reminds me of a quote from Winston Churchill: "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings, and the inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery."
Of course, one always sees oneself doing the heroic thing, compassionate, caring and brave. But how would I have responded had I grown up in 1920s-'30s Germany, constantly being told that my people were so taken advantage of by the Versailles Treaty, with such horrendous economic dislocation, loss of hope, chaos, and being told at every turn that it was the fault of a particular group that conspired on a global scale--conspiracy theories being so popular.
Even today, conspiracy theories abound. Witness the Occupy Movement and the voluminous theories of "the one percent", the Wall Street Vultures. It actually seems to go back to Biblical times when the "money-lenders" were mercilessly pilloried.
I try, as best I can, to be aware of my own biases. But I know that as a child and young teenager I cannot count myself among the innocent. Then, coming-of-age in the 60s and early 70s, those prejudices turned against the "rich", those evil ones in power who hog all the blessings for themselves. That reminds me of a quote from Winston Churchill: "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings, and the inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery."
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